Growing Up Genin
by maravelous
Summary: Oneshot; The Birth of Team Gai.


**Growing Up Genin**  
_A Team Gai Story_

**November 27; Thanksgiving**

Maito Gai was not a greedy person.

But when it came down to being a Shinobi, he had to take what was handed out to him.

"Yes! I will indeed accept your request! I will become a Jonin!"

The man's loud voice echoed around the Third Hokage's office. The Third Hokage winced, wrinkling his warty face. Kakashi, Kurenai, and Asuma, lined up more properly beside him, all closed their eyes in slight irritation, almost predicting this reaction from their over-exuberant comrade.

"Thank you, thank you for honoring me with this title!" Gai roared, his eyes watering with tears of youth. His bowl-shaped head covered by his glossy black hair, shining suspiciously, as if with grease and the diamonds of dirt particles, reflected the sunlight that was magnified through the tall glass windows of the room. He had two large black eyebrows, thick and magnificent over his strikingly beady eyes, glinting with excitement and paired with a large pug nose over a sturdy chin.

Gai took pride in his appearance. His vest he'd achieved by becoming a Chonin was never torn or stained, and of course he had that trademark, green spandex suit, clinging tightly to his skin with the stubbornness of a little child, shiny and squeaky clean.

"Calm yourself, Gai," Hokage ordered sternly in his low, rumbling voice.

Obeying immediately, Gai straightened up. "I will fulfill my duties properly, Hokage-sama, I promise you that!" His teeth, white as snow, gleamed in a wide grin as he demonstrated to everyone in the room a fancy pose with his long arm stuck out to reveal a thumbs-up.

They all couldn't help but smile, just a bit.

"I'm going to make everyone proud! Just give me a chance!"

Meanwhile, as Gai reached the climax of his life, a boy was born. His mother held him, smiling. He had a frock of black hair on his head and two large black eyebrows above his closed eyes.

"He was quite persistent."

The mother laughed as the doctor spoke. "Yes, he was a fighter."

And so Rock Lee was born.

**March 9; The Season Of Creation**

Maito Gai woke up with a wide smile on his face, knowing automatically what day it was. He got dressed and ready in a flash and soon he was out the door.

He walked around the village, asking around for a certain silver-haired Shinobi. No one responded with a good enough answer, but at last he found the ninja sitting on a roof reading that same little orange book. Gai smirked.

"Hello…_Kakashi_!" he cried dramatically, jumping and landing with a loud thump in front of him on the roof and emphasizing the man's name obnoxiously.

Kakashi, not startled in the slightest, to Gai's disappointment, looked up calmly over the rim of his book. "Oh, Gai." he said simply, his navy blue mask moving with his lips. "I haven't seen you in a few days. How have you been?"

"How have I _been_?" Gai repeated, straightening up and pointing a large, bony finger in Kakashi's direction. "That is not a question you should be asking at the moment, _Kakashi_!"

"Is there a question I should be asking, precisely?"

"No! You shouldn't be asking me questions at all!" Gai declared. "Today you should be challenging me!"

"And why is that, might I dare ask?" Kakashi tested.

Gai almost toppled to the ground, the impact of Kakashi's words so strong it was like a hurricane wind hitting him full force. "You don't remember?" he screeched.

"I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be remembering."

"You fool!"

"So sorry," Kakashi tried.

"You do not know…" Gai stood straight again and grinned. "But that is even better! I can remind you with a bang!" He took a deep breath, seeming quite proud of himself.

"Today, Kakashi, is the day that I first named you my rival!"

The same day, a child was born to a happy couple. She had brown hair, and she yawned cutely in the mother's arms as she held her in her bedroom. The mother laughed sweetly. She was Chinese, and the father was the man that had brought her back to Konoha.

"You're the one that's going to name her," the father said, looking at his wife fondly. "Have you thought of something yet?"

"Yes…" The mother kissed the girl's head lovingly. "TenTen."

**July 3; Fate**

Gai, who had recently been name Gai-sensei, had just failed his first trio of students.

"It's only obvious none of you are strong enough to be Shinobi," Gai finished sternly, looking over his bulgy nose at the three Genin in front of him that he'd been training, staring at him with their mouths agape like three fish, shocked by the staggeringly blunt way Gai had told them of the grim news.

"B-But Gai-sensei-"

"No 'buts'!" Gai snapped. "I do not want to put people who are not ready into the ninja world. You don't know yet what's waiting out there. You don't know how to deal with these things. Tests and word problems don't prove how strong you are. The training that I put you through does. And, for the second time today students, _you fail_. I am afraid you do not have the flame of youth in your chests."

"No, G-Gai-sensei, we'll be stronger!"

"Please!"

Gai sighed and flicked a hand in the air dramatically. "Alas, cute children, you have not seen what I have!" he cried. "It is fate!"

That moment, a woman in the Hyuuga household was smiling down at a young boy grimly. "Ah Neji…" she whispered with sad eyes. "I think I can die looking down at you, my son…"

"I'll take care of him," the man next to her promised his wife gravely. "He is my son, and I will take care of him."

"Yet I wish he hadn't been born, the poor boy…" the woman whispered. And Neji Hyuuga opened his pearly white eyes to look up into his mothers. That was the first time he saw his mother before some elders came and took him away.

And that was the last time he saw his mother.

**December 27; Cursed**

"Neji. Wake up, son."

"Mph." Neji gave a muffled yawn into the thick cotton of his pillow. He inhaled deeply. The familiar scent of powder and sterilization filled his nostrils. He sneezed slightly and rolled his little body over, opening his eyes, two pools of lavender and white, deep, the depths of which were un-seeable. The pair slowly rolled over to look up at his father from where he lay spread eagled on his bed on the matted floor.

His father, in the usual Hyuuga robes, his long hair in the same low ponytail Neji's was in, stood above him, hands clasped behind his back and a look of amusement on his face. "Good, you're awake. Hurry and get dressed, we're going for breakfast."

Neji smiled, sitting. "Okay," he said eagerly, clambering clumsily to his feet. His father left the room with a bit of a laugh, and Neji got dressed in some of the small robes a maid had laid at the foot of his bed for him. He shuffled his tiny feet into his slippers and slid the paper door open, greeting his father.

"Ready?" his father asked.

"Yes."

"Come, then."

"Okay."

From when Neji was released from the nanny's hold to his current age, four years old, he'd followed his father around like a baby duck, obeying his every order and willingly helping any way he could. He felt it was his duty towards his family, and towards the man that raised him with smiles and laughter, the father he loved.

"Oh, Neji, look. It's your cousin. It's her birthday today, Neji."

Neji's father stopped and a little girl stopped too, her own father there as well. Neji looked up at the girl's father. His own father's twin brother, Hiashi. Head of the family. Neji had met him a few times before.

"So Hinata-sama is three years old," Neji's father said fondly. "Congratulations."

"Thank you." Hiashi said. Hinata, seeing Neji, hid behind her father's robes shyly. She had short, dark blue hair and the same Hyuuga eyes. She poked her head around her father's legs again and smiled as best as she could.

Neji blinked, then whispered up to his father, "She looks nice, father. Don't you think?"

Neji's father simply smiled sadly down at Neji.

Seeing the man's face, Neji's eyes widened with concern. "What is it…? What's wrong?"

"It's nothing."

But Neji was not convinced.

"Hizashi." Neji and his father both turned to Hiashi, who wore a stern look upon his face. "It's time I took Neji under my wing," Hiashi continued, eyes staring straight at his twin brother's with hidden meaning.

"…Alright…" Neji's father said quietly.

"What? What's going on?" Neji asked, confused. "What does he mean? Father?"

"Go with your uncle now, Neji," Hizashi said quietly. "It'll be alright."

Neji blinked, but he did as he was told and followed after Hiashi, who ignored him completely, into a small room off the side of the path through the clan. It was dark as soon as they entered, and Neji, suddenly scared, couldn't see a thing.

Pitch black. Cold. He shivered. He heard voices and footsteps, felt people pressing past him. It was busy, and overwhelming. The door closed and the last slivers of light were gone. He whimpered and stumbled a bit. Then a candle was lit, and the room was thrown into a dim, flickering orange glow that lit up everyone's faces eerily, lengthening the shadows and casting dark streaks under their eyes, stretching across their jaws and straight cheekbones. There was a table in the corner of the room, long and silver and hard. Three elders stood against the wall, one of them holding the candle. And Hiashi stood by the table.

Neji gulped. "What's going on…?"

"Sit here, boy," Hiashi said suddenly, placing a hand on the table. His voice and face were both clear of all emotion. It was only filled with business. Family. Tradition.

"Why? What are you going to-?"

"Now," Hiashi barked harshly.

Neji twitched, frightened, and scurried over. He clambered onto the table as best as he could, getting a bit of help from his uncle, but he did not lay down. "What are you going to do to me?" Neji tried again.

"Lay on your back."

"Why aren't you answering me?" Neji asked, his voice raising. Adrenaline pumped through him, he felt his eyes growing larger, pupils dilating, nostrils flaring. The symptoms of fear.

Hiashi simply pressed Neji down against the freezing cold metal of the table, hands firm on his thin chest. Neji felt leather straps circle around his wrists and ankles, and he struggled but could not move. He bit his tongue in terror and blood poured from the new wound, salty and metallic and rolling through his teeth and down his throat as he gulped.

"What are you doing? Where's my father, I want my father!" he cried insistently, earnestly. But no one would listen to him, and suddenly Hiashi's face loomed over Neji.

"Don't touch me, stay away from me!" Neji yelled, thrashing against his holds, his robes slipping on his shoulders. "Father!"

"Hyuuga Style Jutsu," Hiashi suddenly said loudly over Neji's persistent cries. "_Juinjutsu_!"

Neji cried out in pain. A searing pain shot through his forehead. A flash of green shined in front of his eyes and he collapsed, suddenly too weak to struggle against his bonds any longer. He closed his eyes, tears squeezing between his lashes. Something was wrong with his brain, he could feel it. He had a pounding headache that made him feel sick to his stomach.

"It's done; we can let him go now."

The leather straps were loosened, and realizing he was being set free Neji's eyes snapped open and he jumped from the table and crashed through the door, not caring if it flew off of it's hinges or not, only wanting to see one person. He ran, tripping a bit, the bottom of his robes tearing and being ruined with dirt, his slippers flying off of his feet and away into the sand. His head was pounding, and it felt too heavy, but he ran on.

His father was waiting just to the side of the house. "Father!" Neji cried in relief, and then he tripped and staggered into the ground, the dirt billowing around him.

Neji felt his father's hands help him up, and he began to sob into his chest. "Father, it hurts, my head hurts…!" he moaned, clutching the fabric of Hizashi's robes and burying his face in them. His hands were shuddering, he was deathly pale.

"I know…" Hizashi whispered sadly, gathering his son to him. A few Hyuuga's passing by stared, but the two could only see each other. "I truly know."

Neji opened his eyes slowly. "They did this to you too…?"

"They do this to everyone." His father held Neji out to look at him, a grave smile on his face. "But it's alright. We can both get through this. It's bound to happen anyways."

Neji frowned. "This is what you c-call the '_in-ev-it-a-ble_', right?" he stuttered, trying out the new word.

"…Yes, I suppose, but-"

"I am going to fight it, then, father!" Neji decided suddenly. He stepped back and wiped his tears away, stubbornness building up in his chest. "I'm going to fight _the_ _inevitable_! Just give me a chance!"

**January 17; First Kunai**

"TenTen, sweetie, stay away from that."

TenTen, four years old, pouted as her mother dragged her away from her father's scroll inside their padded flat. "I just wanted to look," she mumbled.

"Yes, but from looking you could end up damaging something or hurting yourself," TenTen's mother said wisely, turning back to her craft she had in front of her on her lap. A small golden replica of a Chinese dragon, scales glittering in the dim candle light.

TenTen sighed. "I'm bored, mother. Isn't there something else to do…?"

"Why not eat some lunch?"

"I just ate."

"How about you try to make a craft as well?" her mother suggested as she examined a shaky eye of the small half-done face. "I'm sure you'd be good at it."

"I don't want to craft, I want to fight like father," TenTen insisted, sitting down stubbornly.

"That's my girl."

"Father!" TenTen smiled happily and clambered to her feet to greet the Shinobi that entered the house.

He laughed and picked her up, hugging her to him while sharing a smile with his wife before setting the girl down.

"How are the borders?" TenTen's mother asked the man as he walked over and sat at the kitchen table in his ninja garbs.

"Perfect, Fire Country is as quiet as ever," he said simply as TenTen ran over to him and began to look through his pockets eagerly, trying to see if there was something he'd brought back for her. Noticing this he looked down and laughed. "Sorry, TenTen, no souvenir. I only bring those back from the Land of Rain, this time I was just called on duty to patrol the borders."

"Aww!" TenTen frowned in disappointment. "When will you go to the Land of Rain again?"

"When there's some sort of trading going on or I need to escort someone important," her father said calmly.

TenTen glowered and decided to pull her hand out of his pockets, but before she did so her fingers brushed, on their way out, something hard and cold. She blinked, and her tiny hand curled around something with a short thick handle and a blade about as long as the back of her hand with numerous flat sides.

She smiled a bit and pulled it out, and with that said quickly, "I'm gonna play outside!" and ran off, her parents approving shortly and turning back to their discussion.

Giggling at her wrong deed, TenTen stumbled through the grass, snagging her navy pants and pink Chinese shirt her mother had made for her, barefooted and free-spirited. She ran all the way to the tree in front of their house with the target on it. She stood in front of it, then looked down at her weapon.

"I saw father throwing this at that target earlier," she said slowly to herself, her breath fogging in front of her. The cold air bristled past her skin and the tall grass swayed as she thought. "He was trying to get it in the center." She looked up. "And he threw it from back here…" She backed up a few steps and stopped. She carefully analyzed her range. "I wonder if I…" she whispered.

She lifted it up and tried to throw it, but she felt a sharp pain when it left her fingers, and her arm dropped immediately, the kunai darting into the ground where it sank into the grass. She yelled out and plopped to her butt on the dirt, feeling the moist soil stain the bottom of her pants but not caring.

TenTen held up her hand, covered in a thin, red layer of blood, dripping a bit off of her wrist. She couldn't tell where she'd cut herself at first since everything was the same color, but then she felt the sharp pain along the top of her finger. It wasn't that bad, but being a child, she promptly began to sob.

"Oh TenTen, I told you to stop playing with things!" TenTen heard her mother yelling out from the door, then felt her father laugh a bit and pick her up.

"She's so curious," he said as he ran back to the house. TenTen cried into his shoulder as he ran, taking comfort from his labored breaths and the shaking of his wide shoulders.

"Father, it hurts!" she sniffed as her father set her down on the floor and her mother immediately ran to get some bandages. She held up her hand and grimaced at the dry blood caking her fingers. It cracked grossly when she moved her wrist, and she wailed some more.

"It's alright, you're mother's a natural at fixing these things up," her father said, smiling. "But you learned your lesson, didn't you?"

Her mother came into the room and grabbed TenTen's hand harshly. "I told you so, sweetie," she said sympathetically when TenTen cried out at the strain. "You won't ever touch those things again, though, will you?"

Hearing this, TenTen faced her parents defiantly and said, sniffing, "You're wrong!"

"Hm?" They stared at her, a little surprised at the suddenly outburst.

"What do you mean, TenTen?" her father asked.

"I'll try again!" TenTen promised. "I'll try again and again and again! I don't care how much I'll bleed! I'll touch lots of those! Just give me a chance!"

**February 10; A Mistake**

"You were right to think there was something wrong with your child."

Lee's round eyes widened. His back pressed to the wall, he turned his head more so his ear was facing the door directly. He strained to hear more, tried to make sure he was a perfect eavesdropper. He had to hear everything. Ever since his parents had told him that he was going to get a checkup, even though it wasn't at the usual time of year - which was spring - Lee knew something was out of place.

"Now he's four years old, exactly?"

"Yes," Lee could hear his mother say. "He just turned four last November."

"Ah…Well, you see, when we did the X-Ray, we found something…peculiar…"

"What's that?" his father asked calmly. Lee recognized the worry hidden in his tone, however.

"I'm afraid that your son was born without the ability to perform Ninjutsu or Genjutsu."

Lee tilted his head to the side. He could tell by his mother's gasp and his father's sharp exhale that this was a bad thing. He'd heard about jutsu's before. They were supposedly the key to being a ninja.

But that couldn't be the only thing that made a Shinobi, Lee thought. Wasn't there more to it?

"I'm sorry. If there was anything we could do we'd do it, but there just isn't a way to fix that problem."

"It's alright…" Lee's father said quietly. "He doesn't have to be a Shinobi after all, I was just…looking forward to having the family tradition carried out…"

"I'll take my leave, then."

"Thank you."

Lee quickly scurried behind a standing plant in the hall and crouched there, not exactly hidden, but the doctor walked the other way. Lee emerged from behind the plant, watching the doctor turn a corner, and he darted to the door again, flattening himself to the wall and waiting for more.

"I guess we should have expected something like this, right?" Lee's mother was saying.

"What do you mean?" Lee's father asked, a touch of anger in his voice. "Our son can never be a true Shinobi! He'll never be able to graduate!"

"He could be something else, dear, he doesn't have to fight!"

"It's a tradition, a family tradition, and now it's been halted. It's like a stone in the river, the cycle is broken."

"I just…" His mother heaved a sigh. "I don't know what to say."

"It's not the child himself. He's a good boy," his father said, his voice gentling. "Maybe something just went wrong with the birth."

"You're saying our son is a mistake?"

"Not that _he_ was a mistake, just that there _was a_ mistake."

Lee slowly walked back to his own checkup room, knowing the conversation wasn't going to get much better. He sat on the bed and looked out the window. He was confused, and slightly disappointed. He knew his father would never look at him with respect.

"Father said that I'm like a stone in the river…" Lee said quietly. "That I broke the cycle." Lee narrowed his eyes. "But only for a short time. Though the stone is there, the water soon finds a way around it, right?"

Lee clenched a fist decisively.

"I will find a way around it! Just give me a chance!"


End file.
